Fun in Mumbai

My entry into Mumbai was not the most pleasant. I was awoken from a lovely sleep on the overnight bus by the sudden feeling of nauseousness. I won't go into any more details but things could have been better. They also could have been a lot worse though! My plan was not to stop in Mumbai, but to catch a train onwards the same day. Due to the condition I found myself in, I decided to have an overnight stop before continuing with my journey. And I'm glad I did.

I was very fortunate in finding another friendly person sharing my dorm, with whom to have fun exploring part of the city. We happily sat on the Foreign Tourist Only bench whilst getting other foreign tourists who struggled to use a camera to take our picture. This was at the train station whilst we were working out how to get tickets for the journeys we wanted to make. As it turned out I never did get a ticket for my next journey. I was told I needed to come back a bit later but we accidentally spent too much time doing other things and so I didn't have time to get a ticket before my train left. Luckily no ticket inspectors came round though, so my journey was for free.

We came across an arts show with some brilliant displays made mostly from recycled goods. There was a chimney type thing made of clothes. You could go through a cloth curtain and inside there was just enough space for two people to stand. On the ceiling were lots of mirrors. We hid in there until the next people looked through the curtain and then we jumped out and shouted RRRRAAAARRRR. The response could not have been better. The poor victims were a group of school aged girls who were very startled indeed. After their initial shock though they joined us in finding the funny side of it.

Amongst other things there was a wishing tree with possibly thousands of written wishes pinned to it. There were the fish in the photo above. And there was a work desk hanging upside down with everything you would have on the desk glued onto it. Underneath was a mirror so you could see it all up the right way.

We managed to find the gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Hotel. They were surrounded by tourists and people wanting to take your photo for you, of course for a fee. They had examples of past photos, so we picked one and asked if we could have it with the girl who was in the photo. We found this quite funny but the guy taking the photos didn't understand at all. And we never did get the photo of that girl.

Near to our hotel were loads of street stalls selling food and drinks. When I was feeling recovered from my nauseousness I had the most delicious toasted sandwiches. They had so many ingredients - cheese (huge amounts of cheese both inside, and on top after it had been cooked), beetroot, peppers, boiled potatoes, cucumber, tomatoes, a type of green chutney, and butter. Before they were cooked they were perhaps 10cm tall. They were then put into a special metal holder and cooked in a fire - so good!

I'm not sure that I fully understand the meaning of all the pigeons in the second photo. We spotted then in the middle of huge busy roads in this sort of inclosure. There was no roof so they were free to come and go as they pleased. There was a little gate at the side where people with seeds came and fed them.